When Mireille Karera speaks about fatherlessness, she does so with a calm intensity that suggests a truth long rehearsed, questioned, resisted, and finally allowed into public language. There is no accusation in her tone, no theatrical exposure of private pain. Instead, her words arrive measured and deliberate, shaped by years of listening to herself and to others. Her new book, Forsaken for a Sake, is neither a conventional memoir nor a therapeutic handbook alone. It operates in the space between testimony and method, translating personal absence into a structured practice of reflection and repair. The book invites readers to sit with discomfort, to trace behaviour back to origins that are often unnamed, and then to commit to a disciplined daily routine that Karera believes can alter the trajectory of lives, families, and eventually communities. Karera’s own life provides the narrative spine, but it is not the destination. Her story is used as a lens rather than a centrepiece, a way of showing how unresolved childhood wounds can travel quietly into adulthood, shaping ambition, relationships, leadership styles, and self-worth. Born in 1976 into refugee conditions shaped by decades of regional upheaval, she grew up within histories that were larger than any one household. As a teenager she was sent to Europe, later built a career across the Middle East, and eventually returned to the continent as an entrepreneur and executive coach. That movement across geographies gives her credibility with readers who live between worlds, carrying layered identities and inherited silences. She has spent years in boardrooms, classrooms and coaching rooms where pain is often disguised as performance. Out of those encounters came a practical framework: thirty minutes a day for thirty days of guided self-coaching, designed to build recognition, emotional regulation and renewal. As she puts it, “When I left Africa at eighteen, I gained global exposure, education and professional confidence, but I had never really connected with Africa as an adult. Over time I realised that my purpose was not just to succeed individually, but to return and build something that could help others heal and lead differently.” The seam of a life Karera’s family history stretches across a century of dislocation. Her father’s story begins in the late 1950s, when colonial politics and regional instability placed him in boarding school abroad, separating him from a home that would never fully be restored. His own father was later killed, leaving him fatherless in a foreign land and eventually a refugee. “That rupture did not end with him,” Karera explains. “I was born into the third generation affected by displacement, and each generation carried its own version of loss.” ALSO READ: If you are a CEO, make customer care your focus - business coach Her parents separated when she was very young, and her childhood unfolded across borders and households. Extended family and community provided structure, yet something essential remained absent. “I was surrounded by people,” she says, “but there was a quiet place inside me that felt unseen. At the time I did not have language for it. I thought that was just how life was.” For years, Karera excelled. She built a career in multinational environments across Europe, the Middle East, Johannesburg and Nairobi, spaces where competence was rewarded and affirmation was external. “You can be applauded in boardrooms, promoted, trusted with responsibility, and still be carrying a little child inside who was never told, ‘I see you, I’m proud of you,’” she reflects. “Achievement can hide pain very effectively.” In 2015 she founded KORA Coaching & Business Academy with the intention of training locally grounded, internationally accredited coaches who could serve African contexts without reliance on imported expertise. Today the academy accredits coaches working across Africa, Europe, North America and Asia. “We are exporting Rwandan-made coaching,” she says. “We are training Africans to coach African leaders, African entrepreneurs, African families, and also international clients who want culturally grounded insight.” The deeper turning point came earlier, in 2014, during a coaching session that disrupted her sense of self-sufficiency. A facilitator asked participants to identify who had validated them as children. “When he pointed at me and asked, ‘Who validated you?’ something inside me broke open,” Karera recalls. ALSO READ: Global Women's Summit opens in Kigali “I found myself crying in a room of more than a hundred people, shocked by the intensity of my own reaction. That was the moment I realised that success had not healed everything. It was the beginning of a long, necessary process.” Hidden trauma and daily habits At the heart of Forsaken for a Sake is the idea of hidden or unconscious trauma, experiences that remain unprocessed and therefore resurface indirectly. Karera describes it as something people carry quietly across decades. “It is unconscious,” she explains. “You do not wake up every morning thinking, ‘I am traumatised.’ But it follows you into your relationships, into how you respond to authority, into how you lead, into what you tolerate and what you avoid.” She introduces the concept of the “emotional fugitive,” a person who avoids feelings because confronting them would expose deeper wounds. “At some point you decide, usually very young, that you will never feel that pain again,” she says. “So, you build a wall. You stay busy, you stay strong, you stay productive. But walls that keep pain out also keep connections out.” Left unexamined, these defences shape adult behaviour. Karera identifies more than twenty recurring patterns in the book, including overperformance, chronic unforgiveness, forcefulness, emotional withdrawal and persistent victimhood. She speaks candidly about her own experience with overperformance. After back-to-back trips between Dubai, Nigeria and Ghana, she collapsed on a flight. “My body shut me down because my mind refused to listen,” she recalls. “I had convinced myself that rest was optional. That moment taught me that resilience without awareness becomes self-harm.” ALSO READ: First Lady rallies women to engage more in male-dominated ventures Each chapter of the book is anchored around the letter “F,” moving from Father to Fugitive, Forgiveness and Forcefulness, among others. The structure combines reflection with guided self-coaching exercises. Karera chose the thirty-day format deliberately. “We believe in thirty-day detoxes for our bodies,” she says. “We commit to thirty days to change our eating or fitness habits. I kept asking myself, why do we not offer the same discipline to our emotional lives, to our inner narratives, to our unresolved pain?” A significant portion of the book examines how childhood wounds surface in professional environments. Karera recounts how participants in her programmes begin to recognise familiar patterns in leadership. “The angry manager, the impossible boss, the leader who exhausts everyone around them. These are not just management styles,” she says. “Very often it is a wounded child showing up in an adult body. When people understand this, they stop personalising everything and start responding with clarity and boundaries.” Practice, pilots and proof The programme has moved beyond theory. A pilot cohort in Nigeria, supported by the Africa Re Foundation, offered early evidence of impact. Participants ranged across age, gender and seniority. Many described outcomes that were emotionally transformative. “We had people tell us, some for the first time, that they had forgiven their fathers,” Karera says. “Not because the past suddenly became acceptable, but because they needed to release themselves from carrying anger that was shaping their lives.” Another recurring insight was the recognition of overperformance as compensation. Karera often refers to the high-functioning alpha personality, whether male or female. “You are competent, driven, impressive,” she explains, “but underneath that drive is often a need to prove something to a parent, to a past, to an internal voice that keeps saying you are not enough. When that is named, people can finally choose to rest without guilt.” ALSO READ: Gender equity, mental health take center stage as women in business tackle work-life balance Karera is careful to place causality in context. The book does not claim fatherlessness as the single cause of crime, addiction or corruption. Instead, it argues for modest and realistic linkages. “When a child grows up without a lived experience of belonging, of being chosen and protected,” she says, “they are statistically more likely to adopt impulsive survival strategies. These are not moral absolutes. They are patterns, and patterns can be interrupted if we pay attention early enough.” Conversation, confession and culture The public reception of the book has been shaped by cultural norms that value private honour and restrained speech about family matters. Karera admits she hesitated to write it. “People warned me that I would be seen as unfilial, that I would be exposing my family,” she says. “But I kept returning to one truth. This work is not an exposé. It is an act of reverence. I am honouring my father by trying to give him, through narrative and repair, what he himself never received.” Her response has extended beyond the page. Since 2023 she has organised annual Father’s Day events under the theme From Trauma to Triumph. These gatherings bring together mentors, fathers and young people in intentionally cross-generational dialogue. One question from a Gen Z participant has stayed with her. “They asked why they should even consider marriage when so many unions end in divorce,” Karera recalls. “That question carried despair and caution at the same time. It reminded me that if young people are opting out of family life because they fear repeating harm, then we are facing a serious social turning point.” She acknowledges Rwanda’s growing openness around mental health, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic, but insists that impact must extend beyond urban centres. “If healing conversations remain in Kigali alone, we will miss the majority of the population,” she says. “We need regular listening spaces in imidugudu and rural sectors, places where people can speak without shame and be heard without being labelled.” Identity in the age of the feed Social media, Karera argues, accelerates insecurity. “The curated life of the feed invites constant comparison,” she says. “If you already feel a sense of lack from childhood, scrolling can deepen that wound. Everyone looks happy, successful, fulfilled, and you start to believe that you are the problem.” ALSO READ: From Wall Street to Kigali: A couple’s quest for financial freedom and global impact The discipline of thirty daily practices offers containment in this environment. Karera describes the work as an invitation back to interiority. “We teach people to identify the scripts running in their minds,” she explains, “and then to consciously reauthor them instead of absorbing whatever the world projects.” Her counselling framework is intentionally simple. It moves through four steps: acknowledge that there is a problem, ask for help, commit to change, and seek accountability. “We have performance evaluations at work,” she says. “We track targets, outputs, KPIs. But how many of us evaluate the health of our minds or our hearts? Mental hygiene deserves the same seriousness we give to professional success.” From book to movement Karera refuses to leave the book as a private artifact. She insists it must scale in a way that respects local ownership. The programme is designed as a campaign that seeds mentoring cohorts capable of multiplying. The ambition is to establish ten host cities, beginning with Rwanda and Nigeria, and to build networks where healed individuals become mentors to others. “If you have a thousand transformed people in a city,” she says, “you create a ripple effect that can touch a million lives. It is both practical and symbolic.” She frames this vision within Africa’s broader development agenda. Citing the African Union’s Agenda 2063, Karera emphasises people-centred growth and African solutions for African problems. “Healing work is not neutral,” she argues. “When Africans design their own counselling and mentoring systems, rooted in their histories and cultures, that is also a political act. It restores agency.” Presence as a parenting strategy To parents, Karera delivers a practical plea. Presence matters as much as provision. She tells the story of a senior public figure who, despite relentless schedules, always answers his children’s calls. “That habit,” she says, “is presence. Not just being available, but intentionally choosing your child, again and again.” ALSO READ: Women leaders in Rwanda’s finance sector She advocates flexible rhythms of work and what she calls compounded presence, the idea that small, consistent deposits of attention build durable psychological security. “Children do not need perfection,” she says. “They need to know they matter.” Her message is also ethical. Wounding does not condemn one to repeat harm. “It ends with me,” she tells participants, a phrase that functions as both vow and civic statement. Individual healing, she insists, is not only therapeutic. It is social. “When people heal, they stop exporting their pain into institutions, relationships and communities.” A writer’s work and the road ahead Forsaken for a Sake is Karera’s second book. Her first, a seven-day self-coaching guide on creativity, encourages readers to imagine themselves as builders of new industries. A third book, focused on women and power, is scheduled for release next year and will address the complexities of female leadership and presence. Her publishing strategy is pragmatic. The book is available internationally on Amazon and locally through partners such as Charisma Bookstore in Kigali. Accessibility matters, she says, because readers become mentors, and mentors carry the work where professional coaches are scarce. She ends public conversations with urgency tempered by tenderness. The festive season, she notes, can intensify loneliness for those who feel forsaken. Her advice is immediate. Notice the wound. Ask for help. Practice the work. Commit. The chant she invites audiences to repeat is not rhetorical flourish but behavioural instruction. “It ends with me,” she says, a sentence that draws a boundary, declares responsibility, and invites others into the work. In a continent shaped by displacement and endurance, Karera’s project is both intimate and political. Heal the hearts, she insists, and societies may yet heal themselves. Identity, the book argues, is not reclaimed by erasing the past but by being honest about it. That honesty begins privately, in the act of naming a wound, and continues publicly, in building structures that allow others to speak, be heard, and transform. In saying “it ends with me,” Karera asks a continent to imagine that the cycle can indeed end.
